The Walking Drum
First edition cover - pre publication copy
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| Author | Louis L'Amour |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
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Publication date
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1 May 1984 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 468 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
The Walking Drum is a novel by the American author Louis L'Amour. Unlike most of his other novels (whose number exceeds 100), The Walking Drum is not set in the frontier era of the American West, but rather is an historical novel set in the Middle Ages—12th century Europe and the Middle East.
Forced to flee his birthplace on the windswept coast of Brittany to escape the Baron de Tournemine, who killed his mother, and to seek his lost father, Mathurin Kerbouchard looks for passage on a ship and, although forced to serve as a galley slave initially, travels the coast and attains the position of pilot, frees a captured Moorish girl, Aziza, and her companion, then frees his fellow slaves and with their help sells his captors into slavery and escapes to Cádiz in Moorish Spain, where he looks for news of his father.
Hearing that his father is dead, Mathurin goes inland and poses as a scholar in Córdoba, but his scholarship is interrupted when he becomes involved in political intrigue surrounding Aziza and is imprisoned by Prince Ahmed. Scheduled to be executed, Mathurin escapes eastward to the hills outside the city, but before he leaves soldiers arrive and ransack and burn the place where he is staying, leaving him for dead. Mathurin returns to Córdoba and, aided by a woman he chances upon named Safia, he takes a job as a translator. However, the intrigue in which she is involved threatens their lives, and they must flee the city. Safia, through connections of her own, has gathered news of Mathurin's father, and tells him that his father may be alive but was sold as a slave in the east.
Leaving Spain, they take up with a merchant caravan and travel by land across Europe, stopping along the way at various places to trade or to fight off thieves. Reaching Brittany, the caravan tempts a raid from the Baron de Tournemine, but they are ready for his attack and, routing his forces, press on, joined by another caravan, to sack the baron's castle. Mathurin personally kills his enemy, avenging his mother, and, leaving the caravan, takes Tournamine's body and throws it into a fabled swamp rumored to be a gate to Purgatory.
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